30 wears. And a million problems.
Earlier this week, in the run-up to COP26, Channel 4 News interviewed the Scottish model Eunice Olumide. I admit that I haven’t followed Eunice’s career, but a quick Wikipedia check reveals that she’s an ambassador for Zero Waste Scotland and has been awarded an MBE. On the broadcast, I guess she was presented as a younger voice in the battle to reverse global warming and climate change.
One thing she said really took me aback.
Talking about practical measures ordinary people could adopt, Eunice revealed that she tries to ensure she wears clothes at least thirty times.
I wondered whether I’d misheard.
I thought about the battered t-shirts I dig out of the wardrobe when I go for a run — some of which have survived countless years of service. Some of my clothes will have been worn 60 times, 90 times, 120 times. All the flipping time.
I posted on Twitter and was surprised at the volume of response.
Some people were telling me that no, I’d misunderstood. Eunice meant 30 times between washes. (We know that microfibres get freed up when clothes go for a spin with Persil, so environmentalists tend to favour the wholesome whiff of unwashed fabric.)
I was prepared to accept that I might have got it wrong, but someone reposted the video clip. Eunice had indeed meant 30 wears in total.
What’s more, this idea is a thing. With a website and everything.
And in the discussion on Twitter, it became clear that in the world of fast fashion, no one expects to wear clothes more than a few times. What’s more, the fashion businesses build their model around the fact that people don’t.
Clearly this all opened the door to some generational banter. Older people proudly regaled me with stories of the clothes they’ve been donning since the 1970s. And inevitably, there was that sense that the generation condemned for causing the climate catastrophe is actually more ecological — in some respects — than teenagers raised on Boohoo and Missguided. We were soon on to Ernie delivering the most ecological milk back in the day, with his recyclable bottles.
To be honest, I’m not interested in inter-generational shit-stirring. There are people of all ages who care about the environment and people of all ages who don’t. I also have no issue with Eunice, who seemed very genuine, intelligent and decent.
But we do have a wider problem. A big problem.
It’s about how we change the culture of consumption. Because actually 30 wears of an item of clothing is not very ambitious and, I would suggest, unlikely to radically change patterns of consumption.
Perhaps it represents something realistic? People won’t abandon their lifestyles, but they might make small, incremental changes. If we adopted the same approach with other environmental threats, we’d tell people to try one vegetarian meal a week or to forego one flight each year.
Psychologically, I can see the potential in this strategy.
Environmentally, it is hopeless, as it completely underestimates the scale of the problem and the speed at which the climate crisis is now unfolding.
If you want a sense of the scale of what needs to happen, I suggest reading George Monbiot’s latest article. The columnist has a brilliant understanding of the environmental feedback loops and tipping points that we’re encountering in the 2020s. He also reads the economics, politics, sociology and psychology of the climate debate very well.
Where he’s much weaker is over the roadmap to get us out of the mess he describes.
He is a modern-day Jeremiah and his articles effectively end up being one long ‘WAKE UP SHEEPLE!’
Except, of course, they’re published in The Guardian, so the readers are already fully woke.
My feeling increasingly is that if truly radical change is going to happen, it’s unlikely to be under democracy. This makes me profoundly uneasy, as I passionately believe that democracy is the most desirable system of government.
But let’s think it through. Everything needs to change.
Yes, the billionaires need to cough up cash. In many ways, the Musks, Bezoses and Gateses of this world are easily identifiable targets. They epitomise the grotesque imbalance of power and wealth we see in the world today.
There are changes, however, that need to be made in every aspect of our own, much more ordinary lives.
When I go to visit my local supermarket, everything about the experience is completely unsustainable. The whole supply chain. They sell foods from all over the world, all year round.
If we told people that the future involved junking Tesco, Sainsburys and Waitrose, would they vote for it?
As soon as Covid restrictions lift, we see people rush to take their much-needed holidays.
If a party leader told them that, in future, they’ll be restricted to one trip every five years, where would the cross on their ballot paper fall?
And we could go on. That useless phone upgrade. The mining of Bitcoin. The energy consumed by a zillion Zoom calls.
None of it is sustainable. And if these things are to be rationed (as Joanna Lumley bravely suggested recently), it is hard to imagine it ever happening without compulsion.
That’s the dilemma. A government that insists upon the action really needed to prevent two or three degrees of warming? It’s a government people will never voluntarily vote to elect.
